


it starts with bloodshed

by theviolonist



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Friendship, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 15:05:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/787393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And she's so <i>kind</i>. She listens intently, her eyes never wavering to something more gripping than Caroline's romantic woes. As hard as she tries, Caroline can't hate her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it starts with bloodshed

i. 

There's a new family moving in across the street. Caroline's mother, half to make her stop running around like she's on fire, asks her to go bring them the gift basket. 

"Go say hello for us," she says, and there's something in her eyes like she wishes Caroline were more shy. 

So Caroline goes. A little girl with pigtails opens the door.

"Hello," she says with a smile. _That was me,_ Caroline wants to say. _That's what_ I _was supposed to say._

"Here," Caroline says, and she thrusts the giftbasket forward, into the girl's hands. 

The girl looks up with wide, crystal-clear eyes. 

"Thank you," she says.

Caroline wants to run; instead she steps inside. She'll be self-destructive, later, but that was just plain foolishness.

 

ii. 

Of course that was never going to be the end of it.

 

iii. 

Elena (Gilbert, but soon enough she's Elena end of, which is marginally better) likes chocolate, but when Caroline talks about shameful late-night binges, her stomach pinched with a twisted sort of relish, she furrows her brows. 

"Why would you do that?" she asks. 

Caroline opens her mouth, ready to quip back something borderline cruel, but finds she has nothing to say. 

 

iv.

Bonnie isn't like that. Bonnie is good in school, she's reasonable, she's attractive, but she's not Elena. For one, there is something dark in her, all the way inside, where she doesn't like to look. She talks about it with disgust, her lip curled, like when she says 'magic'. And the other thing - well, the whole school doesn't know her. 

It shouldn't matter, but it does. Elena gets everything effortlessly: she's pretty without working at it, toned because she goes jogging every morning with a smile on her face; she dates Matt Donovan and has good marks and her parents love her. 

And she's so _kind_. She listens intently, her eyes never wavering to something more gripping than Caroline's romantic woes. As hard as she tries, Caroline can't hate her. 

 

v. 

"How do you do it?"

Elena turns her head to look at her. She was doing homework, backlit by the sun. Saying that it was like a halo would be clichéd, but it's true - on Caroline it looks like her hair's on fire. 

"What do you mean?" 

_Do you really have no idea?_ Caroline doesn't ask. 

"This," she says instead, and with her hand she scoops the horizon, to mean, _everything_. "Everything."

Elena caps and uncaps her highlighter with two fingers. It's reassuring, somehow, to know that she has the same little idiosyncrasies that people like Caroline. Maybe she can even make mistakes. 

She looks like she's going to answer, though, so Caroline rushes out, "Nevermind," and goes back to lighting her cigarette. The stench is going to stick to Elena's bedcovers, but she doesn't complain. 

 

vi. 

It could've gone on: Caroline already saw them at thirty, Elena demure and suburban, practically perfect in every way, still. Maybe a boyfriend would have dragged her out of Mystic Falls, but Caroline doesn't doubt even the big bad world would have found her to its taste; and she saw herself in a car, with her heeled feet on the dashboard, sticky, incandescent, incapable to keep it all in. Ruined. 

Caroline knows she wouldn't have taken the necessary precautions (condoms; failsafes; cutting contact with Elena) and tumbled happily on every obstacle. But that doesn't happen.

That doesn't happen, because the Salvatores come back to town. 

 

vii. 

Caroline hears about Stefan for a month, before - sometimes she listens and sometimes she doesn't, painting her nails boredly while Elena moons over her dashing mysterious gentleman.

After, she doesn't hear about him - not the same way, at least. He creeps in Elena's shadows, vanishes from her bedroom window, and when she talks about him it's urgent, almost panicky, like she's afraid she won't get to the end of her sentence before something happens.

Something; that usually means Damon. 

 

viii. 

Caroline wakes up in Damon Salvatore's bed and the first thing she thinks about is Elena. Elena would never do something like that. 

The second thing she thinks is _I was a child, before_. 

And then she sees Damon cross the darkened room, barefoot and bare-chested, grinning a fanged grin, and she thinks, _no more, no more_ with more sadness than she thought she would. 

 

ix. 

We don't call it innocence. It wasn't that. Peace, maybe, but not innocence. Innocence makes you feel like you've lost so much. 

 

x. 

The first time Elena comes to her door, exhausted, her fingers covered in blood, Caroline lets her in without a word. She sits her down on the couch, cleans her hands and her cheeks, her neck; gives her alcohol and tea, a mug of each, so she can choose. She crouches at her feet, and she doesn't look away when Elena looks down at her, wide-eyed and paralyzed, mute with horror. 

"I used to want so hard to be you," she whispers, when Elena's head drops in the crook of her shoulder and she starts sobbing, frame-wracking sobs that reach deep into her chest. 

_No more, no more, no more._


End file.
